The Social Consequences of High Population Density

The man who participates in decisions about urban affairs today seems a most unreasonably imposed-upon fellow. Not only is he called upon to be comfortable in both of C. P. Snow's two cultures (on the one hand considering engineering problems and on the other choosing among competing notions of urban esthetics), but he is frequently asked to show some familiarity with a third minor but lustily growing culture: that of the social sciences. To walk in the elegant and orderly garden of natural science and to trace subtle paths in search of taste no doubt offer some pleasure. To hack one's way through the tangled thicket of the social sciences, however, must frequently seem an imposition-especially so if one's major business lies elsewhere. The motive of this paper is to offer some aid and comfort to the person who looks in the social sciences for assistance in making choices in urban planning. Let us begin by arguing that most work in the social sciences can be divided into two kinds. The distinction between the two depends on taste and judgment as to how things in the social world are to be explained. One group of social scientists, who may be designated behavioralists, explain things in terms of the actions which individuals take. From the point of view of the behavioralists, if we know enough about the causes, motives for, and constraints upon individual action we can account for the behavior of groups of people, or even of whole cities, by a process of aggregation.